Goodbye to Our Good Friend Maki

It's been almost a month and most of you know that Maki passed away from mushroom poisoning Friday Dec. 5th. He was loved by all who met him and we find ourselves missing him every day. He was a sweet dog who brightened up our day and we'll always cherish the time we had together.

Hopefully, in his death he has taught us the dangers of mushrooms and everyone we know will be more careful with their kids and pets. In my research of Maki's killer I learned that it isn't just one mushroom but many that have varying levels of toxin and they grow in many states including Michigan and California.

This will be our last posting but we'd like you to check out Maki's younger brother, Helix's blog:
helixreport.blogspot.com

Here's a cute picture of Maki the weekend before he passed away. We took him to a giant off-leash dog park and he had a blast playing with new friends and exporing.

A Failed Halloween Costume

There's a dog boutique that we sometimes stop by on our way to one of our favorite restaurants that allows dogs on the patio. I'm a sucker for dog boutiques and all the ridiculous stuff they make. I try to stick to toys and bones but deep down I kind of wish Maki would wear sweaters, coats, and costumes in addition to the occasional bandana. I often insist that he try on at least one thing while we're in the store. I came very close to convincing Daniel and Maki that a reflective, water-proof, fleece-lined coat was just what he needed for the rainy season, but they didn't have his size :(

One recent success (not from the dog boutique) but something I was determined Maki must have is a Kuranda dog cot for the backyard patio. He uses it about half the time, luckily I found it cheap on Craigslist :) Here's a pic.

Sorry for the tangent back on track to the topic of this posting, Halloween costume. Last week we were back in the boutique and they had the Halloween costumes on sale and I insisted he try them on. I manged to wedge him into a green mohawked zebra costume which I loved but it was meant for smaller dogs and only one leg fit :( He looked decent in a dracula cape and we probably should have chosen that one but I insisted that he try the Dogzilla costume which looks more like a dinosaur or Barney's girlfriend or Dorothy the Dinosaur. And also insisted that he looked good and we needed to purchase it! Here's a picture of him enjoying his costume :)

So really he hated the costume and had difficulty walking. I think it was built for a different body type. He also kept trying to gnaw the parts off around his legs. Finally he gave up and refused to do anything but sulk. I also realized that the costume is very stupid and the head piece makes no sense. If you pull the cap down he can't see and if you leave it up then he has four eyes and two sets of teeth and looks more like his head is being eaten by a cartoon.

We returned it today and with my copious free time I have hopes of making a sweet cape or something more acceptable for Maki!

Maki's Illness Yields Great Insight into My Personality

It's been a rough past few weeks in our house...we had a great vacation at Torch Lake with Maki and the fam. Upon returning to work I was informed that I was being laid off due to the company's financial issues, bummer. The following day I came down with a nasty cold and was generally in a "poopy" mood. I had a terrible time with the Unemployment Department...but enough complaining! This is Maki's blog!

As Daniel mentioned in the previous post Maki caught or ingested something nasty and proceeded to have a week of puking, pooping, and general discomfort. So I guess it was fortunate that I could stay home and care for him during the day because it would have been miserable for him to be trapped in a crate all day. Especially given the fact that Maki felt the urge to defecate nearly every 30 minutes for the first few days. We've been teaching him to ring a bell next to the door to indicate that he wants to go outside. Let's just say it's felt like Christmas in our house lately and I plan on pimping Maki out to the Salvation Army this winter for some extra cash!

I felt really bad for him but after a while it began to test my patience letting him out and encouraging him to come back inside all the time. Especially at 3am in the morning. You're probably wondering "why not just leave him outdoors?" That would have been convenient however it was sunny, in the 80s everyday, and Maki insists on sunbathing. This would have been very detrimental to his current state of dehydration. He's also very stubborn and wouldn't drink any water. We found a compromise where he would lick the water droplets off my fingers if I dunked them in his water bowl which was painfully slow and inefficient. From all this I determined that I can't imagine having an infant that wakes up screaming all night if I can't deal with a sick, bell-ringing dog!! I have more appreciation for all the parents in the world now :) Here's a picture of him being sick and sleeping on the couch.

He's back to his normal self now which is great but he's kept his knowledge of how the bell works and insists on going outside all of the time. I should probably just let him be outside all day but I worry about his dehydration, I'm fairly paranoid that he might be dog-napped, and there's always the fear that someone might shoot with more pellets. So I check on him every twenty minutes or if I hear abnormal jingling of his collar. This has led me to believe that I will be an extremely paranoid, worry freak parent in the future.

I can't remember if we've mentioned before (I think we have) that it was revealed that Maki has a "beebee" lodged in his side. We first noticed it the day we adopted him and then it was confirmed when Maki had chest x-rays for his pneumonia shortly there after. What we didn't know was that he actually has two. The recent stomach x-rays clearly show the one in his side and another further back and closer to his spine. I panicked when I spotted this on the x-ray but the vet said it's not that close to the spine and he'll probably be fine. Later I was relaying this information to an x-coworker and friends and we gained further knowledge that they aren't "bee-bees" they are pellets which are made of lead! Another panic...he could get lead poisoning and how will we afford removal surgery!!!

Here's a view of the latest x-rays!

Having all the time in the world to Google and do "research" during the day I did a thorough review of the long-term effects of internal pellets. Let me just say that pellet guns aren't toys! They're weapons and millions of helpless dogs and kids are shot with them all the time. There haven't been a lot of studies done on animals but I found a number of papers that discussed pellets inside children. Bottom line is if they aren't in a location that is likely to cause serious damage it's better to leave them in than take them out and the chance of lead poisoning is low. So no surgery for Maki :)

That's all for now!

Elizabeth

Its been a while

So it has been a long time since we had an update on Maki... well he has done quite a bit since our last entry. Most recently he went on a trip to Michigan were he spent a week chasing squirrels and keeping chipmunks in check.

The most recent news on Maki is that he is sick... the poor little guy can't hold anything down and has been puking and having diarrhea since Friday. Elizabeth wanted to make sure we had a record of what had happened to Maki, so she proceeded to create a log of events (big or small) that had occurred to Maki since his sickness began, she also collected samples of anything that might have been useful to the vet. Needless to say the vet was incredibly impressed, and proceeded to congratulate Elizabeth on a job well done. He also asked what her professional background was, which gave him some insight on why she is so meticulous =).

We ended up taking him to the vet on Sunday since he was pretty dehydrated. Because of this they had to inject fluids into him, leaving him with the most ridiculous looking hump on the top of his back! It looked like a camel hump and it jiggled when he moved sideways. Eventually the hump became an utter, which I'm sure Maki was not very happy about.

Now he has been hanging out, sleeping, procrastinating, and pacing around the house if he needs to go outside. This is driving us NUTS! It is really frustrating when he goes around not knowing what he wants, but it is probably equally uncomfortable for him. As of now he has been able to hold down some food and water which is good. However, he refuses to take his medicine. This is the first time he has been hard about taking pills, so we are not sure what to do. We are trying to hide it in the food, but he is not eating that much so its kind of hard to do that.

I will end this entry with a really funny picture of Maki that I found in a folder somewhere in my computer...

- Dan

Maki Enjoys His New Yard

We stopped by "the new house" and showed Maki his yard.  At first he didn't really know what to think of it so we took him around on the leash to have him sniff it out.  Later we unleashed him and encouraged him to explore.  It took a few moments and he didn't seem interested in venturing away from us.  Then, out of nowhere he must have realized that it was "His Yard!!!" and decided to celebrate with a few victory laps around the shed.  Needless to say I think he likes his new romper room!

I happened to be videoing with my phone so the quality is poor.  But the little dashing blur is Maki ;)

-Elizabeth

Maki's Future Playground!

For the past month we've been religiously scouring craigslist's "for rent" postings. Our lease ends in May and we would really like to find a cute, affordable house with a nice yard for Maki. It was a mentally tiring exercise due to the fact that we we're either looking too early and no one wanted to hold the house for a month or the majority of budget-friendly homes were in the "murder zone" of Oakland. We did view a couple homes that were in the nicer, lower crime zones of Oakland but the prices were on the high end of our budget and we'd rather not stretch too far.

After our return from the Mitten vacation we became more liberal in our search and started to consider the fact that we might need to look at multi-unit dwellings or stay in our current location. However, we really would like to move out of our current "Jr. One Bedroom" apartment and by Jr. One Bedroom they mean studio with a extend-o wall. Not very conducive to people who have varying morning wake-up hours. We also wanted to move away from neighbors on the other side of the wall as Maki's barking was previously a concern and the lady below us is less than pleased with our noise level at times.

We looked at a real walled one bedroom within our current community but it was previously inhabited by a smoker and smelled horribly. Our current apartment was once inhabited by a smoker and the closets continue to leech smoke odors into my clothes.

Our search was becoming more and more dismal and we began calling any decent looking ad in craigslist that we happened upon. One add was for a small one bedroom house and "small pets negotiable." Maki is small for a dog so we called and went to the showing last Monday. The house was indeed very small and below highway 580 (which puts in slightly within the "murder zone") but it had a large yard and the neighborhood appeared safe. The house had just been renovated with new carpet, cabinets and appliances and fixture so the interior was clean and appealing.

We discussed it and decided that it was a good match for us and sent in our applications. There had been 3 other interested parties the day of the showing but we won! The landlady is very nice and agreed to have the yard mowed down and fix the portions of the fence that had fallen down so Maki would not escape. She agreed to allow Maki with only an extra security deposit which was nice compared to our apartment which charges an extra $300 in rent for a pet.

Here's a link to the floor plan that I designed. http://www.floorplanner.com//projects/18501848/floors/18525102/designs/19835598?guest_pass=dtmgfa

Even better she is going to give us the keys early so we can begin to move things in over the course of the next 3 weeks! We stopped by on Saturday to take picture of the yard to share with Maki and friends. I put together a couple panoramic shots!

-Elizabeth

Bath Time!

The day we got back from our vacation (last Sunday) we were obviously very happy to see Maki. While we were petting him, hugging him and kissing him we came to the realization that he smelled utterly horrible. Before he had a characteristic Maki "musky" odor. Maki did not have the characteristic dog odor, his ears actually smell like ferrets! However, the odor at this time was completely different, this was wet doggy smell times ten. Part of the reason he smelled like this (other than not having had a bath in about a month and a half) was that he had been around other dogs constantly for a while now and he had just come back from a hike with Elizabeth's co-worker (this hike has a couple stories that will be explained in a separate post). Despite the combination of reasons, it was time for a bath.

Let's begin by saying that Maki is not a water dog... he is afraid of the rain and does not like getting wet. I suspected this was going to be a very traumatizing experience for him. To my surprise it wasn't! Don't get me wrong, he did not enjoy it... but he did not hate us for it, which is the most we could expect under the circumstances.

The process was as follows: we filled the tub with some water (in retrospect it should have been a little warmer), changed into our swimsuits, got into the bathroom and closed the door! Once he was in the tub he tried to scape a couple of times, this was followed by shivering after being shampooed and rinsed. Before the second rinse we tried bribing him with some treats, he refused to take them! We finished the process as quickly as possible and proceeded to dry him. This took a little while and we decided to turn on the heater in the bathroom... just to avoid getting him sick. After he was somewhat dry we proceeded to let him out of the bathroom. Once out of the bathroom he was as happy as one could be! The experience went much better than it had played out in my mind... We even had some time during the shower to take some pictures!

- Daniel